The Funding Structure of Turkish Tourism Sector and a Model Proposal for Tourism Revenue

Abstract

For decades Turkey has strived for increasing tourism revenues with the ultimate aim to reduce the current account deficit. Turkish governments have offered several incentives such as reduced utility prices, funding alternatives for tourism investments and reduced tax rates, while pursuing policies aimed at eliminating any bureaucratic barriers that may hinder growth in the tourism sector. An official document which incorporates an ambitious and extremely detailed plan to achieve 50 million tourist arrivals and revenues of USD 50 billion by 2023 is on the agenda. This paper is prepared for contributing to the literature on tourism economics based on Turkey which is rare. The aim of this study is twofold; firstly the debut analysis of the funding structure of Turkish tourism sector is realized by using the aggregate balance sheet of 555 tourism companies. Then, a model is proposed by using the linear regression by which the effects of the variables of public incentive disbursements, terrorism index, Real Effective Foreign Exchange Rate, Share of Loans to Tourism Sector in Total Loans provided by financial system, average expenditure incurred by tourist and the tourism receipt level of major and geographically more substitute competitor of Greece on Tourism revenue level is examined.